Bands: Bear the Mammoth, El Colosso, Treebeard, Black Sea of Trees
Venue: The Workers Club, Melbourne, Australia (Naarm, Woiwurrung country)
Date: 29 / 07 / 2023
Photos by Dave Collopy
Review by Ben Eldström
Black Sea of Trees
The night begins with a sombre start as Black Sea of Trees take the stage with a slow opening track that gently builds to a culminating soaring guitar solo. No mucking about, Black Sea of Trees make their presence known immediately and make no attempt to hide anything. Their inspiration from the likes of Opeth and Leprous is clear to hear, and welcomed by the gathering crowd of prog and post-metal fans. Black Sea of Trees certainly favour clean vocals that carry a lot of melody throughout their softer sections, but still aren’t afraid to transition into death-infused syncopation to reach a cacophony in their sound. There’s plenty of enthusiastic headbanging from the crowd as their set develops, making for an energetic start to the evening.
Treebeard
The groove is immediate with Treebeard. This band is a plethora of rhythmically driven riffs built on a foundation of quietly impressive drumming and outright catchy bass lines. As is to be expected from post-rock and post-metal bands, Treebeard love to build up their sound over minutes before unleashing an earworm without even the slightest consideration over whether you wanted to hear something else inside your mind’s ear for the next few days. Seriously, they’ll have you up all night obsessing over a riff, which is a vastly better alternative to thinking about that embarrassing thing you said to your high school crush that one time. Two of these riffs can be found on the tracks Terra and Nostalgia II, both of which the growing crowd were treated to in addition to a newly written and unreleased track. A tease of more to come, hopefully they keep the momentum going with future releases and tours.
El Colosso
On face value it would seem El Colosso were the odd ones out on the bill, broadly categorised as a stoner rock band. They come out the gates heavy swingin’, fast riffin’, and big truckin’. With fat tones like theirs, there’s no denying El Colosso are stoner rock. However it’ll take less than 5 minutes of listening before you realise they’ve snuck in some strange prog elements into their sound like vegetables snuck into a bolognese sauce. Thrown in the mix there too are extremely catchy lead vocals that beg to be sung along to, with heaps of supporting vocals from every member of the band to varying degrees. In some ways their sound is confronting as you have the desire to dance along not knowing that the beat isn’t as simple as you thought. Many in the crowd realised this on the night too, but decided to throw caution to the wind and just have a good time by vibing in whichever way the music made them feel. El Colosso bring a little bit of party to a very cerebral night of prog and post metal without breaking the flow.
As Bear the Mammoth begin to play to the packed room, their palpable joy over the release of their latest album Purple Haus lifts the room to similarly triumphant highs. To mark the occasion they’ve partnered with a local brewery to release a beer on the night, aptly named Beer the Mammoth. It’s a fierce drop; a black IPA with aggressive hops, a thick mouthfeel, and heavy dark colour, with a subtle sweetness throughout. Not typically qualities you’d expect paired with a post-rock band that’s reminiscent of the likes of sleepmakeswaves and Explosions, but yet again their new album pushes into darker and heavier places they and their aformentioned contemporaries haven’t ventured before. They have all the familiarities you can expect from this brand of post rock: catchy bass hooks underneath proggy noodling, slow starts and long builds, and calamatous endings. Whilst they’ve chosen to end some of these songs on a lighter note, every now and again it’ll drop down into heavier morose depths. The entire set feels suitably like a celebration, as it ends on arguably the biggest hook of both their set and the night.
Gig gallery
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